Bottled Goods Read online

  “And I think they wouldn’t mind.” She puffs her cheeks when she inhales. She only does this when she’s angry. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

  “I’ve been busy,” I say.

  “Aren’t we all? You look sick. Are you pregnant? I hope not.”

  She flicks her cigarette butt, and it lands on my father’s grave. I pick it up, trying to avoid touching the traces of her lipstick. “Stop doing this. It’s disrespectful.”

  She shrugs. “Habit.”

  Yes, the habit of disregarding my father, and his wishes. My cheeks are aflame. What will I do if she asks?

  She gets up on her feet, straightening her skirt. “Let’s have a cup of coffee. At your flat.”

  I think about the typewriter, about the empty space it left on our living room table after I’d sold it. “The pastry shop. Let me take you to a pastry shop. How would you like a creamy eclair? Or a chocolate amandine? My treat. For Dad.”

  She coils her arm around mine, and it feels like a python has attached itself to me, strangling.

  “You’re supposed to give handouts to people you don’t know, in the name of the dead. Didn’t Aunt Theresa tell you? I hear you’re spending quite a lot of time together. I hear you also make day trips, to villages, for instance.”

  My knees melt, but she pulls me farther.

  “You’re hiding something from me, and, sooner or later, I will get to the bottom of this.”

  As we walk through the gate of the cemetery, I look toward the sink with cold water, where I always wash before leaving. It’s custom—you wash your hands of sins, or you take them with you, to your home.

  In Which Alina Comes Home Early from School on a Wednesday Afternoon and Finds Her Mother at Her House, Sitting in Front of the Desk Where Alina Normally Grades the Pupils’ Papers, Going Through a Bunch of Letters and a Notebook with a Red Leather Cover

  “Mom! Is that my diary?”

  The Curse

  I’ll be damned if I allow you to leave this country, to leave me all alone, to die alone, that’s not what I raised you for. I could have had all the nice perfumes I wanted and dinners in town with your father, instead of scrubbing the poo off your clothes, getting the smell of burned oil out of my hair, but I did it all for you, and now you want to leave me, leave me? Never, never, never. I have something. What I have here, if you ever try to escape, if I ever hear anything, I’ll call them. Border Security and the Secret Services will hear from me. I don’t care if they bring you here in chains like a wild beast. A wild child you were, an ungrateful woman you’ve grown up to be, ungrateful to me, shame, shame, shame! Cursed, cursed, cursed you are, for being selfish and never thinking of me!

  A Key on a Rope, a Shop, and a Beggar

  Alina’s childhood is a metal key dangling on a thick rope. It becomes warm under her uniform shirt (knee-long with white-and-blue squares), the blue apron (porous and stiff like the scrubber side of a dish sponge), the clip-on red pioneer tie. Her mother works as a seamstress and never picks her up from school—Alina always opens for herself the pressed cardboard door of her empty home. Sometimes a plate of cold food, prepared the evening before, awaits her. Sometimes there is nothing on the table.

  Alina’s childhood is a green backpack with two turtles in bright yellow and green, like the envy of her classmates. By the time she reaches fourth grade, the turtles are fissured and chipped, like Renaissance paintings. No amount of washing can remove the oily stains or the ballpoint-pen traces. She would like to hide the backpack, but there isn’t enough room under her tight coat. It’s also impossibly heavy as she walks to school. Her father only drives her in winter, when she arrives too early and has to wait for twenty minutes in the school playground. The teachers unlock the door at ten to eight. Until then, the children huddle, a colony of miserable penguins, while the wind mercilessly tugs at every patch of skin it catches uncovered, slips under sleeves and loose jackets to take a better bite. The gym teacher once unlocked the front door early and a foul mood drifted from their third-grade teacher that morning, instead of the smell of warm coffee and fresh lipstick.

  Alina’s childhood is lagging behind her two friends on her way home, stopping to stare at the windows of the foreign currency shop. Inside, there are wonders reserved for Westerners and leaders of the Party. The window is ten feet wide and as tall as a grown man. A heavy, green velvet curtain hides the riches inside from the sight of the passersby, but Alina has discovered that if she peers from a certain angle, she can see a corner of the refrigerator with its transparent doors. In it, slim, shapely bottles of Pepsi and Fanta are enclosed. She can also see an edge of the shelf housing the chocolates. Alina often dreams of them. Once, a couple, whom Alina will later think of as Germans, gave her a Toblerone as they came out of the shop. Alina has been writing to Santa for four Christmases, asking for it again. She dreams of the sticky chunks of clotted honey lingering on her tongue once the chocolate had melted.

  The last day she stared through this window was during the summer vacation. Alina’s skin was dark brown, her palms and knees were covered in crusts the color of rotten cherries. A woman with blond, permed hair and orange lipstick stepped out, clutching a plastic bag to her chest: a wonder unheard of. Alina prayed for the bag to break, to spill, to tear, so she could glimpse the marvels beneath the wrapping.

  The woman leered at Alina for an instant, before she lifted her purse and struck her in the head. “Go beg somewhere else, little girl.”

  Alina yelped. The gaudy lipstick should have told her that the lady was neither a lady, nor a foreigner. It should have told her to step aside, and out of the woman’s way.

  The woman turned to the cavelike bowels of the shop and called, “Viorica, call the Police! There’s a beggar outside—and we wouldn’t want the tourists to see her!”

  The side of her face ablaze from the blow and shame, Alina galloped home.

  Now, when Alina is twenty-nine years old, the decadent West is a scintillating display window again that she isn’t allowed to glimpse.

  A Suitcase Full of Dreams

  After her mother leaves, Alina paces the flat, clutching her diary: hallway to living room, to bedroom, to the kitchen, and back. The house tightens, and the walls move to squeeze the breath out of her. Alina goes to the bathroom, turns the water on, and places her head in the sink. The cold stream makes her scalp tingle. She listens to the liquid pouring down the drain, like her and Liviu’s dreams.

  Alina seeks the package of cigarettes she usually keeps for the Secret Service agent and sits in the kitchen. Water drips on her back, on the floor, while she chain-smokes. Her fingers tremble: anger or fear, she doesn’t know. Her heart pounds her chest like a man trying to flee a building on fire. But they are both stuck.

  When nausea claws at her stomach, Alina extinguishes her ninth cigarette. She darts to the bathroom. She throws up, and then remains on her knees, grasping the toilet seat. How will she ever tell Liviu that it’s over? That there was no point to all the preparations they’ve made: the car, the tent, the foreign currency they’ve exchanged. The two suitcases under their bed, packed with their best clothes. Alina can’t sit around any longer, she must unpack.

  The suitcase is made of reddish-brown leather. Alina opens it and begins peeling out its contents. Her angora sweater. A winter coat made of rabbit skin Liviu bought for her birthday just before Mihai defected. The silver brooch shaped like a daisy, the one her father gave her the year she went to college. It’s time to put the precious trinkets back where they belong. It’s time to deplete the suitcase full of dreams.

  Alina opens the door of her bedroom wardrobe. She caresses the lacquered oak. It gleamed golden when they bought it, the year when Liviu and she married. Its surface was smooth like a baby’s skin. Now, it’s full of long cracks, and inflorescences, like the ones that remain on a windscreen when it hails. Its bruised surface reminds Alina of her own marriage. What will Liviu say when he comes home?

  She begins extracting her belo
ngings from the gaping mouth of her suitcase, places them on the shelves. They’re full of cardigans she never really liked: the knitted sort, with colorful geometric patterns. The ones she could find in the Universal store, grayish and always half empty. Her pearl-colored angora sweater looks dejected—like a Russian princess when the communists came to power. So does her fine crepe dress the color of sand, surrounded by brown skirts and a dirty-blue two-piece. Her mother can find fine fabrics, and sew so well, but she never makes the time, not for her. Her own mother. Her mother.

  Alina opens Liviu’s suitcase. She arranges the delicate flax shirts among the other slightly discolored ones, with starched collars that scratch his neck raw. Alina pauses. She remembers a wooden chest at the foot of her grandparents’ bed, containing all their clothes, and their linen sheets. Why should she and Liviu need more in order to be happy?

  And then, she knows: Their closet should be purged. They should have their fresh start, even here, in Romania. Alina is determined. What would they have wanted in Germany or France, anyway?

  Alina drags the garbage bin into the room, like a wounded prisoner. She tosses in Liviu’s old shirts, her fluffy pullovers. But soon, there isn’t enough room. Alina stamps the clothes with her foot, flattening them. She twists and pushes, grinding her teeth. She jumps on one foot. It’s like pressing grapes into juice, but without the grapes, without the joy, the atmosphere of celebration. It’s the opposite of merrymaking. She wishes the clothes compressed to the point of disappearance, out of her home, out of her life. She wants to crush them. But they bob their ugly folds up and out of the bin as soon as she lifts her leg. She needs reinforcements, and perhaps some new containers. Alina ransacks the kitchen drawers. Wrenches, screwdrivers, knives, sponges, even one plastic tablecloth, fly onto the brown tiles on the floor, defeated bodies on a bloodied battlefield.

  In the bedroom, she brutalizes the clothes into the canvas bags she brought from the kitchen. Filled carriers suffocate the corridor between the bed and the wall, as she rearranges the fine garments destined for their journey in the empty closet. Alina steps back. The trembling has subsided. She must carry on in the living room.

  Alina doesn’t have any more canvas bags, so she uses cotton sheets to hoard the trinkets displayed in her glass cabinet: a sitting man who holds a fishing net, a group of flamingos, a ballet dancer, sets of cups and plates. When she’s done, there are only six whiskey glasses left on display, made of Bohemian crystal.

  Alina is out of breath and out of sheets, but she wants to continue the purge. She remembers there are burlap sacks in the cellar. She darts downstairs, loots the basement. One of the sacks still holds potatoes—she spills them onto the floor.

  Back on the landing, she stops, transfixed. The door is wide open. Has she lost her mind? Or has someone broken in? She steps slowly, trying to steady her breath. Liviu stands in the hallway, turning his head in all directions.

  “Alina, what have you done?”

  His words are like a slap. Alina finally looks around. She sees the empty furniture, their belongings scattered on the floor, or packed in bags. As if an evil spirit had turned their house upside down and shook out its contents. As if it were the house of someone who was on the brink of moving out.

  Except they never will.

  They never will, and she must tell Liviu.

  Alina begins trembling. She doesn’t know if it’s anger, or fear, or if she’s disintegrating.

  The Trip

  On Tuesday, Alina waits for the Secret Service man with vanilla-and-lemon-cream homemade cakes. Just before he arrives, she manages to change into a pair of long, shapeless trousers and a turtleneck sweater, even though it’s early June. Alina will bake under wool by the time he’s done with the questioning—but these are the least provocative clothes she has.

  The Secret Service man arrives half an hour before scheduled. He grabs her hand when she opens the door and pulls her down her stairs.

  “We’re going on a trip today,” he says.

  Alina pulls back. “Let me just take my purse.”

  She steps inside, pausing on the threshold. Her heart knocks on her ribs, trying to break them. She wonders, how easy would it be to turn and lock the door? What would he do then?

  Instead, Alina drapes the chain of her purse around her shoulder and follows him down the stairs. In front of her apartment building, a van is parked on the curb. It’s green, and its windows are obscured. Alina steps back, but the Secret Service man grabs her elbow and pulls her gently. With his other hand, he unlocks the back door. He pushes her inside. Alina allows herself to be herded. Her mind is a blank sheet. When he blindfolds her, she manages to wail a “Where are you taking me? What have I done?” among short rasps of breath.

  “Shh,” he says. “I’m not hurting you. Not today.”

  She feels his fingertips brushing her face, her hands. She hears a metal clanking, and cold bracelets closing around her wrists.

  “For your own safety,” he says.

  Alina sobs. “Please, I haven’t done anything,” she says. “It was all pretend, I was just—”

  The door slams.

  As the car rocks and sways, Alina wonders what her mother has done. What she has told the agent. If she will be beaten, tortured, mutilated for it. Why? Why? Why? Alina barely represses an urge to pee. She can hardly breathe. Why would her own mother do this?

  After an eternity, the car stops. The Secret Service man helps her climb down from the van, but leaves her blindfold tied. Alina is trembling, and she can’t see, so she leans on the man next to her. His fingertips linger on the back of her hand. Alina wants to pull away, to scream and run. Instead, she allows him to touch her.

  They step into a building. Alina can feel the air changing, the lack of sunlight on her skin. A smell of rotten food, sweat, and mold. Her mind races, trying to invent a convincing lie to tell the man once he begins to question her about the diary. There are voices around her. She can’t distinguish the words, but there are barked orders, screams, and yelps of pain. Alina pulls closer to the Secret Service man. He wraps a hand around her back, moving downward, massaging her behind. Alina wants to tell him to stop. She doesn’t.

  They descend stairs, many of them, until Alina begins feeling dizzy. The man greets various other persons, who answer back. The silence between salutations is marked by shrill wails, like the ones of dying animals. This is either a torture center or an abattoir.

  They stop, and the Secret Service man undoes her blindfold.

  “Look!” he says, pointing below.

  They stand on a metal platform, raised around an enclosed yard. In it, two guards, ordering about a dozen prisoners. They’re dirty, they have long, filthy beards, and their clothes are in rags. They’re so thin that their cheekbones, their elbows look like they might pierce through their skin anytime.

  “Look,” says the Secret Service man, “these are dissidents. Conspirators against the state, enemies of the people. And that one is a priest.”

  Alina glances where the Secret Service man is pointing, but her vision is blurred. She’s sick. She pants, trying not to throw up. He grabs her hand, pushes her down a flight of stairs. They descend for a long time, past lighted windows, and into what seems to be a cellar. The screams grow louder. Alina stops.

  “Come, come, don’t be afraid,” he says.

  She curses her mother in her mind. Curses her to die slowly, in the most horribly imaginable pains, and burn in hell for all eternity. She’ll try to tell the Secret Service man that it wasn’t her diary where she wrote about their plans to defect. That it was a work of fiction. That she hasn’t come to the ending yet, where the Agents of the Motherland discover the defectors, and punish them for their treason. She’ll tell him, my mother has gotten it all wrong.

  The screams are unbearable, nails drilled in Alina’s eardrums, when they stop in front of a great iron door. The Secret Service man pushes it open. In front of them gapes a long corridor with doors on each side. On e
ach door, there’s a metal panel.

  The Secret Service man holds her hand, walks to the middle of the corridor, then stops. He slides open one of the panels, pushing Alina forward. Inside, a naked man is tied to a chair, black and blue with bruises and congealed blood. A guard is hitting him with a shovel. The prisoner barely rouses, his head moving from one side to the other when the blows fall. Alina screams.

  “A defector,” says the Secret Service man, sliding the panel shut.

  Punish. Punish. Curse.

  The Secret Service agent places his hand over Alina’s mouth. She’s still screaming.

  “Shut up,” he says.

  He’s smiling. He wraps his hand around Alina’s waist.

  “Come, let’s have some privacy, huh?”

  He pulls her toward him, and she falls on all fours. Her knees have turned to mush. Alina doesn’t belong to herself anymore, she’s his, he can do as he pleases, she must trust him, can she trust him? What will he do to her?

  He forces her up, throws her on his back like a sack of potatoes. Alina cries, biting her fists, drawing blood.

  The Secret Service man stops in front of the last door on the corridor and swings it open. A chamber illuminated by a weak light bulb. A concrete floor, dusty and smudged. She’d rather not think what caused the stains. A table and two chairs. The man eases her onto one of the seats. He caresses her hand.

  “Have I upset you?”

  Tears flow down Alina’s cheeks. She tries to speak, but her tongue is made of lead.

  The Secret Service man kisses her hand, then moves to the chair opposite her. From his breast pocket, he pulls a notebook the size of his hand, and a pencil.

  “Comrade Mungiu, on October 15th last year, pupil Atanasiu brought contraband items to school. I was given to understand that you facilitated the escape of the said pupil. Is that true?”

  “N-no. No.”

  Alina repeats in her mind the words of her statement, like the poems her children learn by heart: It was a novel I was trying to write. In the end, the Agents of the Revered Motherland catch the wrongdoers, punish them. It was destined to be informative for the children. Curse my mother.